In another post today we pointed you at a problem fixing WordPress support at StackExchange. It’s a big issue, but imagine if similar things were happening at WordPress.

Don’t imagine it; they are.

The fixing wordpress.org support issues may not be identical to the issues inherent to fixing WordPress support problems at StackExchange, and in fact we’ve complimented wordpress.org for what a great job they do providing support under the right conditions. But imagine you’d done exactly what the wordpress.org support forum said to do, and a moderator redacted your information:

This is a business decision turned to a support problem. And it’s all about the problems in The WordPress Community. The WordPress Helpers using w-o-r-d-p-r-e-s-s in our domain name has ticked off a few people, and the redaction you see is us being punished—even though we’d submitted the support request 100% in accordance with wordpress.org support procedures.

I presume we aren’t the first to be punished by wordpress.org forum moderators who didn’t understand that their job is to provide support, not mete out punishment according to their own moral compasses.

This is one reason the issue of fixing wordpress.org support stands where it does. WordPress, as both an open-source project and as the business generation engine of its corporate parent Automattic Inc., is run in a decentralized way, in large part via the efforts of brave volunteer labor. Everyone who “works on WordPress” is connected to the people who Work for WordPress Automattic, but the decentralization of the effort makes top-down control of business processes extremely difficult.

In other words, wordpress.org support is coming from … no-one who’s actually accountable to anyone “at WordPress”. FIXING WordPress support won’t be easy because it can’t be.

Whew.

Every now and again we talk here about why we started The WordPress Helpers, and … fixing wordpress.org support is the real answer. Want to help?

<center>The WordPress Helpers: Making WordPress Work</center>

Article Title:

Fixing Wordpress.org Support

Subject:

A secret to fixing Wordpress.org support? Wordpress.org moderators following their own guidelines. Fixing WordPress.org support means opening peoples' eyes.

Author:

The WordPress Helpers